A collapsed wall caused a mud slide on Wright Street off Van Duzer Street in Stapleton sends rocks and other debris into the backyards of nearby residents as well as onto nearby streets.
(Staten Island Advance/Hilton Flores)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - STAPLETON - Many North and East Shore residents worried about possible flooding and downed trees as Hurricane Irene approached the borough with her expected high-wind fury on Saturday night, but residents of dead-end Wright Street, between Van Duzer Street and St. Paul's Avenue, focused on another fear: A mudslide from the unstable hillside that towers above them, across the street from their one-family houses.

And sure enough, as Hurricane Irene's winds howled and rain pelted down on early Sunday morning, a large swath of the steep hillside collapsed, sending a mess of heavy red mud, vegetation, roots, and rocky rubble onto the street and sidewalks below.

Entrances to some of the one-family homes at the end of the block were blocked, and the only fire hydrant serving the dead-end street was partially buried.

"We have been complaining forever about this," said homeowner John Dixon, who has lived in the house at the very end of Wright Street for over six years.

"I was standing on my porch at about 2:30 a.m. (Sunday morning). The wind was blowing but it wasn't raining," he said. "Then, all of a sudden, I heard a whoomp!" he recalled, searching for a word to describe the sound that he heard.

Sanitation Department supervisor Steve Woolverton was on the scene by 1:30 p.m., with a crew, front-end loader, and two dump trucks.

"This is the first (significant) mudslide we've had since we started working a 6-o-clock this morning," he told the Advance. "There was a small (slide) on Van Duzer and Broad Streets, but this one is the worst I've seen."

The mudslide now has residents of Wright Street worrying about something else: The now-denuded hillside, stripped of protective vegetation, may slide further in upcoming heavy rains, and uproot the tall trees directly across the street from their homes.